A Passion For Garlic

Americans eat more than two pounds of garlic per person per year. Mostly, the garlic is from Gilroy or from China. But Woodland's Perry Skinner grows his own. He cultivates rare, pungent varieties sourced from all over the world.

The stinking rose... garlic, and lots of it.
It's all over Perry Skinner's kitchen in Woodland. He's
peeling a big bulb he grew.

PERRY SKINNER: This is a Lorz Italian, and it has huge, huge
bulbs. See the size of it?

The individual cloves are bigger than a grown man's thumb. You
may never have heard of the Lorz Italian, but it's one of the rare
garlics that Skinner grows. As he peels the bulb, a flurry of
garlic skins drifts onto a cutting board.

PERRY SKINNER: We keep quite a few papers on them…I
call them papers, so that their life expectancy is a lot longer on
the shelf.

Skinner is tall, but I've got him at eye level. He sits on a
stool because his legs are frail. He pops the cloves out of the
bulb.

PERRY SKINNER: These are… these are hard to get
apart.

ELAINE CORN: It's a good sign of what...
freshness?

PERRY SKINNER: Yes, well, it's
a good sign of everything. And this is an absolutely perfect popper
right here. Now, now we're getting down to the big cloves.

Skinner lightly smashes the cloves with the flat blade of a
knife.

PERRY SKINNER: It's easier to peel for one thing, when
you smash it. It brings out the flavors and the oils.

ELAINE CORN: Looks pretty juicy.

PERRY SKINNER: It IS juicy! Want to taste it?

ELAINE CORN: Yes.

PERRY SKINNER: Go ahead.

ELAINE CORN: [chews] …oh my goodness, woooo! That is some
kind of burn! It has the same kind of burn as a hot
pepper.

ELAINE CORN: So, if a recipe calls for 2 to 3 cloves of
garlic, if you're using this, you might need half?

PERRY SKINNER: No, you just use this. It won't bother
you a bit.

ELAINE CORN: I can even suck the juice out of
it.

PERRY SKINNER: I know you can. You can't do that with
that garlic they sell uptown. No way.

"Uptown" to a country man
like Skinner is a chain grocery store that sells commercial garlic,
grown in the US or imported, by the ton.

PERRY SKINNER: Commercial garlic and our garlic people
really don't see eye to on a lot of things. The price, number one,
knocks it out. And they feel the same way. Garlic is garlic. It's
all white garlic. It's just a blah tasting garlic.

Skinner's varieties are purple-splotched, pink-hued, rose-tinged
, brown-blushed, each with its own mild or piercing flavor. Some
cost up to $100 a seed. No matter the variety, garlic has never
been short on lore. Like, vampires can't leave a grave if their
mouths are stuffed with garlic. As folk remedy, garlic is credited
for curing everything from leprosy to impotence.

Margaret Scheller, a dietician at Sutter Medical Center in
Roseville, gives garlic its due, but with caution.

Perry Skinner has brought me to his garlic patch a few miles
from his house. He takes a seat in an old metal rocker under a
lemon tree -- just like he does every day during the seven months
he watches his garlic grow.

PERRY SKINNER: Now
this is where I grow all my garlic. See those beds?

Sixteen raised beds are marked, each for a different variety --
Czechoslovakian Vekak, Gabi's Purple from Mexico, Simonetti from
the Republic of Georgia, and a real stinger named Bogatyr from
Russia.

PERRY SKINNER: The hardest thing about garlic is at
harvest time.

Now, the beds are bare. Skinner yanked every bulb of garlic by
hand, dried them and took them to Corti Brothers grocery store.
Skinner says it's probably his last harvest. Even so, at age 84,
Skinner knows garlic was the right crop for him.

PERRY SKINNER: You really can't be a good garlic grower
until about 80 years old, unless you have patience -- and the love
of garlic.